Shock and/or vibration sensitive articles (i.e., “fragile articles”), such as hard disk drives and other electronic equipment, require special packaging when shipped inside shipping cartons. Conventional packaging includes paper, preformed polystyrene foam or beads, etc. Ideally, the packaging absorbs and dissipates shocks and/or vibrations impinging the shipping carton to minimize the shocks and/or vibrations experienced by the fragile article.
Conventional carton packaging materials are inadequate to meet the current, stringent requirements for shock and/or vibration absorption. In order to satisfy such requirements, voluminous carton packaging materials are required to cushion fragile articles. Voluminous packaging materials are expensive and take up excessive space before and after use. Further, voluminous carton packaging materials necessitate larger shipping cartons, which are more expensive to purchase and ship. The shock and/or vibration dissipation performance of current packaging materials can depend in large part on how the user packages the fragile article. If a particular conventional carton packaging is deemed to provide inadequate protection, the remedy is to add additional packaging material, thereby increasing the shipping carton size.
Unitary packaging structures have been developed that are made of flexible polymeric materials to allow shocks and vibrations to dissipate through flexing of the structure walls. Many unitary packaging structures are designed to dissipate shocks and vibrations primarily in only one direction or fail to provide adequate protection under the stringent performance specifications from fragile article manufacturers. Such unitary packaging structure designs are not easily adapted to predictably change dissipation performance to meet changing specifications. Solutions have been proposed with varying degrees of success. There continues to be a need for improved solutions for packaging fragile articles.